I would think it would be ok to eat the chicken 3 times a day ONLY if it's a small amount each time. Like the day before or in the morning you could take out how much you want for the entire day and divide it by three for your three meals.
I think the USDA list can be a little confusing on meat, the way it explains it. So I'm not exactly sure how much choline 1 gram of chicken breast is, but somewhere between 60 to 80 mg of choline per gram I think is a good estimate. So why don't we split the difference and call it 70 mg of choline per 1 gram of chicken, which 1 gram of chicken ends up being about 1/2 a chicken breast, and then we can round off the numbers. That would mean a whole breast most likely is about 140 mg of choline! Somebody please correct me if I'm way off here. Also you could get a food scale and weigh it for yourself.
If you were to have actually 3 breasts a day, you might be getting as much as 420 mg of choline just simply with your chicken alone, not to mention whatever else you want to eat that day. That's pretty high I think for someone with TMAU.
I don't know what number you've decided to stay under, but for me, I'm really trying to stay around 100. So I try to eat about 1/4 of a gram, 25 mg, of chicken, which would be roughly, rounding off, 18 mg of choline. It's a VERY small amount.
You could have 1/2 a gram of chicken, which would be about 1/4 of a breast, and would add up to 36 mg of choline. That's still not too bad for the whole day. I would maybe split that up into two meals because the protein fills you up.
Like I said early, I got a scale that weighs in grams. It's really helpful.
I have to say, these are EXTREMELY small amounts of chicken and it leaves me still hungry. I don't know how long I can really continue to do this. I know we're supposed to stay low for a lifetime but this 100 is VERY low and maybe we only need to stay this low for awhile and then hopefully we could increase our choline count a little bit.
For example:
THE OTHER DAY FOR DINNER I HAD:
1/4 g chicken (really only a few bites) = 18 mg choline
2 g mashed potatos from box, made
with rice milk and butter (1g-11 mg choline) = 22 mg choline
1/2 g chicken gravy in a jar. ( I diluted
it with water to make it go further) Note
there also was soy lecithin in it and
possibly soy oil, but I figured it was a
very small amount = 3.5 mg choline
TOTAL CHOLINE FOR MEAL: 43.5 mg
(And I was still VERY hungry and went back and ate some white rice very shortly afterwards.)
Now if I were to do that three times a day that would be 130 mg of choline, over my 100 goal, but still really not too bad I guess. There are obviously better choices with lower choline counts but sometimes you just want some mashed potatoes and gravy!!!
AS far as the B vitamins, I have to say "I don't know" on most of them, but I think it's okay to have a lot of B2 because your body just gets rid of what it doesn't need. I think your body can only process 50 mg at a time. But it's very cheap to buy so I get it in 100 mg capsules (that's all I can find it in) and I TRY to take it 5 times a day. The hardest part is trying to remember to take it five times a day. (It will make your urine VERY yellow and that's okay.)
There was a thread in one of the forums awhile ago where folks say it really seamed to make a difference when they took it 5 times a day versus only 3 or something so I'm really trying to take it like every 3 - 4 hours.
It's also very important to take the folic acid if you're taking the B2. I am not an expert at all on this so I'm not giving advice here, just saying what I do. So I take a 400 mcg tablet of folic acid in the morning and one at night.
I personally don't take any other B vitamins. I've thought about the B12 but I"m not sure if it's good or bad for us. I seem to remember mixed comments, but I'm not sure. Until I hear a lot of feedback that it helps, I'll skip it.
Here is a very helpful website I've found for the choline content of food. I don't know if it's the same as the USDA, but if it's not, the counts are similar, and when you click on "choline" in the right hand corner you can sort it lowest to highest or vice versa and you could also search by food groups.
health-diet.us/choline/Here is another helpful one. You can input whatever food you want. Be sure to scroll way down the page to see the choline count. Sometime in the choline column it will have a ~. I don't think that always means there is no choline. I think sometimes maybe they just don't have a choline count for that particular food, but they seem to have it for most foods.
nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2788/2I'd be interested to hear about some folks meals also.
Thanks,
Wendy